Someday
by Kupo Stiltzkin
Summary: Ushiwaka didn’t mind waiting for her as long as it takes, if it means she’s coming back.


**Someday**

When the Great Mother breathed her last, Ushiwaka could only watch as her small companion shrieked in what could be heard as a helpless yelp in his ears, burying his tiny face in blood soaked fur.

The brush Gods' voices—all twelve of them, breezed through his ears. Their Mother had gone into a dormant sleep, perhaps for millennia even, and her weakening had almost driven them to fatality.

One by one, they all whispered their goodbyes to him--_when the time_ _comes, Soon, soon, someday Mother will be among us again, don't kick the bucket before that, her claws and fangs will tear the enemies of Takamagahara asunder once more, until we meet again, thank you, thank so much and the sun will definitely rise_-before surrendering into the long rest and their constellation flickered at the midnight sky.

His flute played a lilting melody at her funeral. It was not a requiem, merely a tune that comprised his notes of a farewell that came too quickly.

The first dawn after her passing, he waited for the sunrise at Moon Temple. Surely enough, as his heart hammered in his chest, the giant yellow orb emerged through the ocean's line. It burned on the water's surface, casting warm rays on his face. She didn't come, even after the sun's high up over his head, and Ushiwaka realized his cheeks were warm and wet from anticipation.

At the second day, he went out and sat again at a rock as slowly the sky began to brighten and the entire world was silent, as if expecting the Mother to materialize from the horizon and run freely on top of the waves.

The third day, he raised his flute to his lips, and began the first tunes of a Moon's hymn of praise for the divine Sun.

The fiftieth morning, he sat at the Temple's stairs and close his eyes, playing another memorable harmony. He believed the warm wind caressing his cheeks was in truth her slim fingers, beckoning him to finish his song.

At the one hundred and eight day, it rained. But Ushiwaka stood at the cliff, watching the dark sky painstakingly turned into gray, as water slowly dripping down his hair into rivulets and dampening his robe. He thought he heard the Gods cry, as if a storm was the only thing that was halting their Mother's return.

One thousand and one dawn after, Ushiwaka watched and waited as the first rays broke through the waterfalls of Kamiki village, painting the pink cherry blossoms petals into a pure white.

_O, prophet_, one of the villagers asked him once, whose skin has sagged and wrinkled and his hands were bony and unattractive. The villager was but a boy at the time of Nagi's triumph over Orochi, and he focused his milky pupil on Ushiwaka's unchanged features. _What—who are you waiting for?_

The man's question went answered, as Ushiwaka merely fixed his attention at the sea and waited as the twenty-two thousandth sunrise colored the dawn sky.

Nagi's descendant came to him at the crack of dawn, a young man with bear like features, his beard wild and unkempt, reeking heavily of rice wine. He posed questions at Ushiwaka, about his own purpose, his true existence, an ancestor overshadowing his every foot step, and the villager's over expectations.

_Mon __chérie, the time will come for you to shine_, Ushiwaka said and he didn't realize if the line was intended for Susano or someone else entirely as the first gleams of the thirty thousandth sun began breaking through the shades of the night.

Four hundred seasons passed, along it he heard about Princess Kaguya's disappearance from the Moon's court, the evil that started brewing at the edges of Nippon, and the scaly hisses that emerged from the entrance of the Temple that he had sealed the last century. He saw the vision of the Capital in chaos, sickness and famine choking the citizens, Darkness reigning in the land of Nippon. The twelve brush Gods will be thirteen once more.

He watched the sunrise again as his vision started to turn into a blur, of cold gray stone morphing into red elaborate paintings on top of white fur.

Slowly, Ushiwaka opened his eyes and smiled at the sun for the first time in one hundred years, as if welcoming a long lost friend.


End file.
